


Graffiti Compulsives

by cementality (rinsed)



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Friendship, I never know what to put here, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 06:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4050280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinsed/pseuds/cementality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2D and Noodle follow up on an old tradition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graffiti Compulsives

At 11:42 PM on a Tuesday night, Stuart Pot, or 2D, was sprawled across the sofa in a t-shirt and boxers, a mess of blankets, cushions, and long, spindly legs, blankly watching a documentary, or a film, or a sitcom, or whatever it was. He wasn't really paying attention. He hardly noticed the rickety front door opening and closing, or the quick footsteps up the stairs.  
A figure slinked through the door to the living room and into the adjacent room — his bedroom. He heard some drawers opening and closing, but he only snapped back to reality when a pile of clothes smacked him in the face, causing him to just about jump out of his skin. He fumbled for them, picking them up haphazardly. Some shoes landed on the floor underneath him.  
He looked up at the source of these things — he first noticed a shock of black hair, atop the head of a grinning Noodle.  
"Have you just got in?" asked 2D.  
"Yeah, get changed!"  
He frowned.  
"I'm going back out, and you're coming too, come on!"

He looked down at the worn jeans, t-shirt and jacket in his hands.

"Where're we going?"  
"Come on, you can't have forgotten."  
He squinted in confusion. She rolled her eyes, reaching into her bag and chucking something else his way. He yelped, the object hitting his arm. It was a can of spray paint. He picked it up, beginning to register the situation.

"Oh yeah. 'Course."

——

The door clicked shut behind the pair, their shoes thumping down the concrete steps to the street. Both turned to look at the top of the roof, and subsequently at Russel, shouting a greeting his way. He turned his head and grinned.

The cold night air bit at their ears as they turned out of the front gate and around the corner.

"So, Noods... where're we gonna go?"  
"Eh... the stairwell down to the tube station, the back of the garages, the side of that big flat block by the houses..."

Street lamps illuminated the roads in gold, beery light. 2D and Noodle's cheeks stung in the cold air, a feeling both have always enjoyed. It smelled like a city night — indescribable unless you know it already.  
Soon enough they reached their first destination; their feet clacked down the train station's steps, patches of wall just waiting to be tagged.  
Noodle pulled out two cans of spray paint, passing one to her accomplice.  
"It's your tradition, you should go first."  
2D nodded, his bony fingers closing over the nozzle, red paint blooming out onto the stone wall.  
His tongue stuck out slightly as he drew out the smiling Gorillaz monkey skull. It looked almost the same as when he drew it a decade before, only this time with sharper teeth.  
Noodle shook her can up the same, drawing out the band's logo beneath the skull.  
They quickly moved to their next destination, drawing the monkey and logo bigger than ever on the blank wall. It looked proud on the off-white paint, the small plants growing on the bottom of the wall speckled red with paint that bled down to the floor.

The two stepped back, beholding their work of art. It wasn't much to anyone else, but it was tradition to them. It signified the music, the beginnings.

"Oi!" a voice thundered from the right. Both turned their heads to see what looked like a police officer in the distance.  
"Oh, shit!" yelped 2D. Both pulled their hoods up, beginning to sprint away from the scene, laughing as they went. The wind whipped against their faces as they passed street light after street light, turning corner after corner. They stopped when they reached their third and final destination, looking behind them to make sure the officer had gone. They laughed between heavy breaths, reckless and alive.  
"Aw'right, you," breathed 2D, laughing, "this is our last one".  
He shook up the paint can one final time, drawing out the red monkey skull. Noodle drew out the logo, paint from the 'Z' dripping down to the floor. A slight bass thudded from one of the flats.

Noodle outspread her arms and fingers. "Gorillaz!"  
She turned to high-five 2D, both haphazardly throwing an arm around the other's shoulders as they manoeuvred towards an empty playground to their right.  
They settled on the cold metal of the swings, swaying slightly forward and backwards, the white noise of the street, and voices and bass from the flats buzzing in their ears.  
2D reached into his pocket, pulling out a pack of Marlboros and offering one to his co-conspirator. She took it with paint-stained hands, placing it between her teeth. 2D lit hers, and then his own, both blowing out smoke into the cold night (well, technically morning) air.

"When did we first do this?" asked 2D.  
"Eh… right after we released Clint Eastwood and we started… 'gaining ground', you know? Just when we moved into Kong."  
"Oh... eh, how old were you then?"  
"Ten."  
"How old are you now?"  
"Nineteen."  
"God, you're so old."  
"Hey! That's rich from you!" she yelped, hitting out at her comrade's arm.  
"Oi, I think you'll find I'm still in the prime of my life."  
"Totally."

He could still hear her accent cutting through her voice as plainly as before. But now, she said words like 'something' or 'thing' the way he did — 'summfink' and 'fink'. She'd picked up mannerisms from everyone in the band; like how she always said 'yo', or sometimes called 2D 'D', from Russel's influence. Or how she would pick her guitar strings with her index finger sometimes, the same way Murdoc does.  
This graffiti ritual was old tradition. When the band started, when Noodle was just a measly 10 years old and couldn't speak any more than a word of English and 2D was freshly 23, Gorillaz just starting to cut through to fame, 2D — a self-proclaimed graffiti compulsive — took her out to spraypaint their name over every wall they could find. To mark the band's beginning, maybe. They did it again just when the band released Demon Days, worming their way into the mainstream. It felt just like yesterday.

"Nineteen, though, that's _mental_."

They'd only been back from Plastic Beach for a month or so, and they were still adjusting to life as they were now. The scars around her eyes had almost completely healed, fortunately. The incident with the El Mañana video shoot must not have been pleasant for her, especially since she was so young. Looking at her, you could tell in her face that she had to grow up quicker than she should have. But she was tough — she always had been, and it was something each member of the band had always admired about her.

"Not as mental as 31."

He chuckled.

"It was great back then, at Kong, init?"  
She nodded. "It still is. Not so fun in between, though."  
"It's good we're all back together, though, y'know. Even with a cyborg it weren't the same as it had been. She was well creepy, 's well."  
"In-it." the phrase sounded funny in her Osaka accent.

"D'you remember when we used t' pull all-nighters watchin' zombie films even though you wasn't s'posed to stay up late?"  
She laughed. "Oh yeah, of course!"  
"We should do that again, y'know."

The two swung side by side, the unruly, irrepressible nineteen year old and the butorphanol tartrate filled, post-childlike 31 year old, inhaling the atmosphere as they were the smoke.

"Ya. We should."

2D dropped his cigarette to the floor, scuffing it under his feet.

"Let's go home, Noods."

Both rose from their swings, burying paint-stained hands into pockets as they strolled home, enjoying the scenery of the inner-city at night.  
Russel was asleep when they reached their house. Their home. 2:45 AM. The house was a mess.

It was a little rough around the edges, like them. But they were, at the end of the day, a band, a family. It was just good for everyone to be together again, able to watch zombie films draped in blankets and cushions on a crappy but comfortable couch on a shitty television, able to make music like they did at the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't that great but it was an idea I had that I wanted to expand on ahaha


End file.
